Resolution

It's been over two years since I've written on this blog, but it has never been far from my mind.  I wanted to chronicle everything.  The struggle and final completion of my thesis proposal and my current struggle to know what to do with it. My internal thought battle over my husband's choice to become a nurse and my eventual acceptance and celebration of that choice. The moment in the spring of 2012 when my husband and I realized that we wouldn't know his now 16-year-old daughter if we passed her on the street, which led to her beautiful act of forgiveness and her reentry into our lives.  The moment we found out that DJ had ADHD and the difficult moments and hurtful times of having a child who says he wants to kill himself.  His eventual redemption through Christ, and the miraculous changes I've seen in him since.  The period of time that HT spent in day care and my mental trial of accepting that I was a day care mom.  E's graduation from nursing school and his commissioning into the Navy nurse corps.  The five weeks E spent away from us at Officers Training Command.  Our move, for the first time, to a new city, a new home, and a new life. The decline and eventual death of my father.  Every birthday, every holiday, every moment of testing or trial or joy.  I really wanted to chronicle them all.

My beautiful step-daughter, AJ.

But this blog was never intended to be a diary of my life.  Admittedly my best writing comes from the moments of my life and is inspired by my personal struggles, but there is a place for diaries, and in my case, the internet is not it.  There are secrets, deep and dark, that you will never read in this blog.  You wouldn't want to.

So what is it then? I'm not sure. A few weeks ago I went back and re-read most of my entries, and realized that this blog represented me in my most real, authentic, true self.  I stopped writing not because I'd lost sight of that self, but it is possible that I lost sight of that self in part because I stopped writing.  The main culprit in my loss of self was busyness.  I stopped writing when I started graduate school again, and I lost all my creative impulse to exhaustion from pouring myself into paper after paper and eventually a thesis proposal for a thesis that may or may not ever be written.

And then more life happened.  Eric graduated from nursing school and received his commissioning, left us for five weeks of officers' training, and then upon his return we immediately moved to a very nice rental home of my choosing in Virginia Beach, VA.  I took a semester off from school to allow the family time to adjust.  Then in October my father began a rapid decline in his already failing health due to Early Onset Alzheimers disease.  He spent a month in the hospital on hospice care, after which my mother brought him home.  Four days later he died.  I hadn't seen him since early August.  I didn't make it in time to say good-bye.  The funeral was beautiful.  I made a picture collage.

I talked about my father's disease, and my fears of it in an earlier post. I can't say that all those fears have gone now that he is dead, but I can say that his death changed a lot.  My very real fear that I too will one day develop Alzheimers is still there, but I've grown comfortable with it, like an old friend.  But when Dad died something broke in me.  I didn't want to spend any more time making myself perfect, ie. a better version of everyone else, so that I could then live out my days in happiness and joy. I wanted the happiness and joy now.  My dad was only 59.  If I do get Alzheimers through the genetic mutation that caused my father's and grandfather's illness, I am now more than halfway through my life.

I think Weight Watchers was my breaking point.  I joined back in July, but I wasn't getting anywhere fast.  It was November when my mom started calling me almost everyday.  It would only be another year or so.  It would only be a few months.  A few weeks.  A few days.  About a week before dad's passing I went to a Weight Watchers meeting, and before I walked in, I actually prayed and asked God to make sure the number on the scale went down.  I simply couldn't take another reason to be unhappy, and I needed something positive, right at that moment.  The scale was up.  I sat down and tried to be calm about it, to tell myself I just needed to try harder, but I was sick of being strong, sick of striving.  I couldn't stop crying enough, and when I noticed people noticing my tears, I left.  I never went back.

I saw my weight not just as an imperfection or a simple flaw, but as a deep wound.  I hated my body, and I continue to hate my body.  Healthy diet and exercise feel like a punishment for being fat.  And I am done punishing myself.

So after the funeral and the Thanksgiving holiday I set out to get help, not with weight loss, but with acceptance and love.  Don't get me wrong, I have people around me who love me.  The unconditional love of my husband is more than I could ever repay, and when I think of God's love for me to send His Son to die for me, I am ashamed to feel unloved.  But that is how I feel.  Why.  Because I don't accept this love that I receive from God and from those people He puts in my life on a deep enough level.  My mother says she loves me? Pah, she is goofy and sentimental and still sees me as a sweet little child.  My husband says he loves me? Well, he only says it when I ask so that must mean he's just trying to keep me around until he finds someone better.  God says He loves me? That's wonderful, but how can a fat, judgmental, unfaithful sinner like me really accept that love unless she spends every waking moment striving to be better to show Him her gratitude?

"Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." (Psalm 46:10, NIV)

On my very first day with my new therapist, she quoted this.  And then she told me that "be still" here is best translated as "let go" or cease striving.  

I still haven't wrapped my mind around this.  Cease striving?  Stop trying to do things to show God, and for that matter others, that I love them?  Stop trying to be the best wife, the best mother, the best Christian, the best everything that it's in my power to be?  It goes against everything my sense of work ethic has taught me.  It goes against things my father taught me.

But it's perfectly in line with God's teaching.

I am not a Bible teacher, I have not been to seminary, and I do not feel qualified to sit here and tell you why I believe that.  I'm just going to tell you I do.  Maybe this is just His word for me, I don't know.  But right now this is what I'm going to do: I'm going to cease striving.  I'm going to be still and know.  I'm going to know that God, my husband, and my family and friends love me.  I'm going to accept that by faith, and not question it.  I'm going to learn to love me the same way.  I'm going to learn to accept myself as is, not because I am perfect, but because I am weak, and His power is made more perfect in my weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).  I am going to learn to live without comparison, without judgment, without perfectionism.  I'm going to live, laugh, observe, listen, relax, create, play, and rest.  I'm going to take naps.  I'm going to love me, and everyone else, the way God does.  And I'm not going to do it perfectly.  I'm going to do it authentically.

Call it my new year's resolution.

Chocolate Covered Brownies and Purposeful Living

The fact that I found clip art for this means I wasn't the first person to make this mistake.

I do not know what possessed me to volunteer to co-lead IC's brownie troop.  Normally this is exactly the kind of thing that I avoid like the plague.  There is so much about it that seems to scream at me that I should not do it.  First of all, my volunteer application has not yet been approved, and since my background is less than perfect, I'm not sure that it will be.  I had to divulge my deepest secrets to another mom who seems to have it all together, who I'd only just met, and then to a professional employee of the local Girl Scout council, and finally on an online form for complete strangers to read.  I shook while I typed every one of those emails.  Tonight I had to lead a meeting that involved corralling seven girls in an echoing kitchen, and baking. I don't consider myself skillful at leading, working with children, or baking, and a room that echos gets on my nerves when it's quiet, let alone filled with seven and eight year olds.  Next I had to lead the push to promote our fall fundraiser.  Thankfully the head leader was able to talk to the moms about it while I did the baking with the girls, but I am also not good at promoting things or selling things, particularly things that I know people are only really purchasing because they like your cute kid and want to support his or her extracurricular endeavors.  Honestly, I've always wondered why more groups don't consider forgoing organized fundraisers altogether and just sending kids out to beg for money.  It's the same thing, and involves a lot less paperwork.

So thus far I have spilled my guts to complete strangers who I perceive as being better than me and who have the opportunity to judge my statements, I took on a leadership position when I am most definitely not a leader, I volunteered to work with children on a regular basis even though I usually find that raising my own is quite enough for me, I baked even though I have yet to get through a recipe without asking E's opinion on something or other, I worked in a loud room, and I asked people I don't know to spend their time selling stuff that no one wants and acted like it was a great idea.  We just finished our second meeting.  Lord, what have I done?

So we baked brownies.  I will now pause so you can either giggle or roll your eyes at this clever idea.....
It didn't go how I wanted it to go for a number of reasons. I totally underestimated how long it would take these girls to work on a recipe together, in part because our first meeting was attended by four mostly quiet little girls, and this meeting brought seven, a few of whom seemed to bring out the hyper in each other.  To make a long story short, my evening was filled with a lot of echoed screaming and giggling, and in the end each girl went home messy, carrying a hunk of chocolate sludge wrapped in foil, and an hour past her bedtime.  By the end the other moms were begging for it be over, IC was crying in the corner because she hadn't even eaten dinner, and the head leader's cousin/babysitter was pretty ticked off.

In the past five years I have endeavored to live a rhythmic, unhurried life, and to keep my family moving at a pace that gave them space to be truly thoughtful about their choices and day to day activities.  When I write it that way it sounds boring and a little silly, but I made the decision to work this way purposefully.  Keeping open space in our schedule allows us to have more times when we find ourselves at home, together, with no obligations hanging over our heads to pull us apart.  I think that my children are enriched by deliberately having some time when they aren't doing homework, or chores, or extracurricular activities.  Creating blocks of open time allows me to remain purposeful during the busy blocks of time because I can slowly and thoughtfully examine how I spend my time and know that the time investments that I make are fulfilling my ultimate purpose: to love God, and grow closer to Him.  In Matthew 19:26 Jesus said, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  Many people interpret this verse to refer specifically to the pursuit of wealth and retail therapy on all of its various levels, and rightfully so.  But I think that most people, when they think about it, would also admit that they treasure their time at least as much as they do their money.  I've always felt that time is of the essence in my life, and for some reason I've always felt hurried, not just in the day to day moments, but also on a larger scale.  Weeks after I started college, I couldn't wait to graduate, weeks after getting married, I couldn't wait to have children, and as soon as I did that I was ready for them to grow up.  A major cause of this is my concerns about my health and genetics, but it's also caused by my acceptance of the common societal ideal that our value is based on how much we can produce.  Yet I know for a fact that that is not how God defines my value, or the value of my children.  I desperately want to teach them that our life's focus should be on our relationship with Jesus Christ, not on how much they can get done, and when I talk to them about how Jesus loves them and how God wants to have a relationship with them, I'm right on target.  But when I get frustrated with them and myself because we simply don't have time to accomplish everything that our schedule is asking of us, I am failing at this.

So I guess the question now is, am I failing to follow this concept of deliberately living at a slow pace and creating space in my life by keeping margins of unscheduled moments in my schedule?  I've struggled with that in these last few weeks, as we run from the bus stop to soccer practice to cub scouts, and then home for dinner and straight to bed.  I struggle with it even on the nights where (praise the Lord) we don't have any extracurricular activities, because even then I have my time filled with preparing fundraiser materials and answering emails and uploading photos and making sure we have parent-teacher conferences scheduled.  My Tuesday morning ladies' Bible study is about to begin reading Breathe by Keri Wyatt Kent, a book that I suggested, and the book that first introduced me to this idea of living slowly and deliberately.  I am very conscious of the fact that as I am about to tell my friends that this is the path I've chosen, my life does not really reflect that.  Yet while I know that the rhythm of my life is running at a frantic tempo right now, and I know that it may be necessary to make some changes to this simply so that I can endure it, I am not outside what God would want for me.  After the brownie meeting tonight I felt frustrated but a friend reminded me that sometimes the moments that seem the most disastrous are in fact the most memorable.  I am co-leading IC's brownie troop because my mom served as my Girl Scout leader for four years, and continued working with other Girl Scout programs for years after that.  While my relationship with my mother has always been complicated, I knew even then that she was doing it for me, and I valued that, even during those early adolescent moments when I wished that she would butt out.  This is an investment in my relationship with IC, and this in particular is something that will create memories for her and I alone.  In this she can know not only that I did this for our family, but that I did this for her.  


Keri talks in her book about living in a rhythm of activity and rest, and that is what I am doing. "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1).  Right now life is crazy, but I know that it isn't going to last forever.  Soccer season will end in November right in time for IC's birthday, and then Thanksgiving, and then of course Christmas, but a moment will come, probably sometime in the first week of January, when I am going to stop, take a deep breath, and know that nothing right then is more important than resting, being still, and thinking about the goodness and mercy of Christ.  Remind me.